Meet the Artists

Brenton Jordan, Unit 1: Ring Shout

Brenton Jordan is a member of The McIntosh County Shouters, who perform the Ring Shout, the oldest African American song and dance tradition surviving since enslavement. The McIntosh County Shouters was formed in 1980 by Brenton’s great-grandmother’s generation, bringing a 400-year old family tradition to public audiences. At present, all members of the McIntosh County Shouters are related by birth and include three generations of Brenton’s family.
Brenton currently lives in Savannah, but is originally from the small town of Eulonia, GA. A practitioner of African and Afro-Carribbean Dance for over twenty years, he teaches both at the Pennsylvania Avenue Resource Center and The Savannah Cultural Arts Center. He is currently a junior majoring in psychology at Georgia Southern University. Realizing the significant lack of Black men within the field, he hopes to address the importance of mental health in the Black community.

Martha Redbone, Unit 2: Southeastern Woodlands Native American Music

Martha Redbone is a vocalist, songwriter, composer, and educator who draws on both her Native American and African American musical heritage. Raised in Harlan County, Kentucky and pre-gentrified Brooklyn, armed with the power of her gospel-singing African American father and the resilience of her mother’s Cherokee/Shawnee/Choctaw culture, Redbone redefines Americana music. With songs and storytelling sharing her life experience as a Native American and Black woman and as a mother navigating the new millennium, Redbone gives voice to issues of social justice by bridging traditions, connecting cultures, and celebrating the human spirit. She is the composer of the original music and score for The Public Theater’s 2019 revival For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by the late Ntozake Shange. Martha’s own new work Black Mountain Women, a timely musical about the ongoing environmental destruction of her ancestral homeland in Appalachia as told through the lives of four generations of women in her matriarchal Cherokee family, is currently in development.

Naledi Masilo, Unit 3: Kwela

Naledi Masilo is a vocalist, composer, teaching artist, and arts administrator who grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa. She graduated with a Bachelor of Social Sciences in International Relations and Sociology from the University of Cape Town and recently graduated with a degree in Jazz Performance from The New England Conservatory. In 2019, Naledi was a resident at the Kennedy Center with Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead Program, where she was mentored by Dee Dee Bridgewater and Jason Moran. She has also been invited to participate in the Banff International Jazz and Creative Music workshop in Calgary, Canada. Naledi is the Founding Director of The Dreaming Girls Foundation, a South African based non-profit organization that cultivates women and girls in the arts to be leaders and critically conscious members of society.


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